Rated 'n' Slated - Deux Furieuses

Deux Furieuses list five things they love and five that piss them off for Artrocker.

RATED

The overnight train from Moscow to Saint Petersburg with no sleep watching the dawn break through the passing forests as people started to go about their work. Playing music to strangers who become friends, taking chances on new adventures.

Meeting Polly Harvey after Patti Smith’s poetry reading concert at The Purcell Room during Yoko Ono’s Meltdown. She told Vas she didn’t want a photo but chatted with us about her and Rob Ellis’s fine work on Marianne Faithful’s “Before The Poison” album which we had only just discovered. In a local library which is no longer there.

Strong uncompromising female artists that inspire us to keep going in a male dominated, sexist, ageist culture. We waited outside Troxy to see Patti Smith who didn’t come but meanwhile we formed a new band. Polly Harvey who has always been there moving the goal posts, Kate Bush’s unhinged singing on “Sat On Your Lap”, Sinead O’Connor bringing new meaning to every song she covers, Sleater Kinney writing lyrics about their own lives, Savages’ Jehnny Beth all powerful riding over the crowd in her black bra at The Roundhouse, The Return of the Sisters of Perpetual Resistance and their Art of Nuisance, Tracey Emin, Louise Bourgois..

Duos – The Body, Xylouris White, Lightning Bolt, The Kills..use your limitations to be even more inventive with form and content.

Boots – you can never have enough boots.. into battle, kick arse boots. Vas has never forgiven Ros for losing one of her favourite biker boots in a car park in Belgium in the dark one night. The other boot is now a plant pot.

SLATED

Walls, fences, razor wire, watch towers..borders and boundaries keeping people from where they are trying to get to. No human being is illegal. Also slated an over reliance on labels, categories and cliques that only serve to alienate people when we should be finding common cause. “Burn down the walls they say you can’t” Kathleen Hannah

Being told to be sexier, that we shouldn’t be doing something that feels natural to us, shouldn’t be learning drums as a girl, or joining bands or still playing visceral rock music as grown women. This is our music, we own it now and we always did. “Take the stage” as Sleater Kinney once sang. We will do what we love for as long as we want in the way that we want.

Male sound engineers and promoters who get it afterwards. We often see their whole closed attitude to us crack wide open after the gig. They should try being like that when we arrive instead of us having to wade through their preconceptions. Being told there is sound coming out the monitors when we know damn well there’s nothing there!

The Conservative Party, the damage they do and the lies they peddle to scare and confuse people into voting for them.

Our rubbish – Heartbreaking to see those starving beached whales recently with stomachs full of our rubbish.